


Routine

by RadioactiveDeLorean



Category: The LEGO Movie (2014)
Genre: Angst, I think?, Poor Self Preservation, Pre-Movie, Self-Esteem Issues, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, also yea, house plant neglect, kind-of eating disorder, my buddy got me into this fandom and Im here to make characters suffer, needs a hug, seriously someone give this guy a damn hug right now, thank my friend for this, this boy - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 13:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15316902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RadioactiveDeLorean/pseuds/RadioactiveDeLorean
Summary: The Instructions never told him how he was supposed to deal with this. They were clear-cut enough. Greet the day with a smile, have a shower, get dressed, have breakfast, go to work, do your job, come home from work, have dinner, relax, shower then bed, and repeat. They never told him how he was supposed to deal with the voice in his head, constantly reminding him of how alone he was.He kept thinking about what it would be like if he just … stopped. Pulled the plug. Gave up completely.He kept going, however, because that’s what the Instructions told him to do.





	Routine

**Author's Note:**

> [my buddy](http://transformersg1fan271.tumblr.com/) got me into this fandom and I'm here to cause pain
> 
> MAJOR warnings for suicidal thoughts/ideation, self-esteem issues, general Bad Stuff. There's no self-harm or suicide/suicide attempts, but just be warned. Please don't read this if these topics make you uncomfortable.

The Instructions never told him how he was supposed to deal with this. They were clear-cut enough. Greet the day with a smile, have a shower, get dressed, have breakfast, go to work, do your job, come home from work, have dinner, relax, shower then bed, and repeat. They never told him how he was supposed to deal with the voice in his head, constantly reminding him of how alone he was.

Emmet might not have been the brightest bulb in the box, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew full well just how little his coworkers and neighbours cared for him. None of them had ever asked him how he was doing, or if he wanted to join them after work, or what his plans for the weekend were (watching TV, in his apartment, alone, as always). His neighbours never popped round with a plate of fresh-baked goods or invited him over for coffee, or even really spoke to him if they saw him. He didn’t have any pets (he was allergic to a lot of types of animal dander, and there wasn’t much space in his tiny apartment anyway), and he didn’t really have any family he could talk to (he had a fair few cousins, but none of them ever kept in contact. His mother and father had long since passed away). He only really had himself, his television and a few small house plants.   
  
When he’d first moved to Bricksburg, he’d been so excited. A brand new city, brand new job and brand new neighbours. He figured he’d be able to start fresh, leaving his old life behind him. All throughout his school and college years, he’d never really felt like he fit in anywhere. There had been so many different groups of people hanging around, and he’d tried to find a way of making friends with each of them. In the end though, with each group, he’d either been excluded right off the bat or gently nudged further and further from the group until he gave up trying, and moved onto the next group. Pretty soon, he’d run out of people to make friends with and retreated to the library during any free periods that he had. He’d used his library time to study hard and had come out at the top of his Mechanical Engineering class at college. He knew that his isolation had been a blessing in disguise - he’d been able to focus solely on his studies, after all - but he couldn’t help but wish that he’d had at least _some_ interaction with his classmates during that time.

It seemed, however, that that lonely lifestyle had followed him through to his employment years.   
  
Emmet had been living in Bricksburg for a good six years now, and he could count how many friends he had on one hand, with all of his fingers curled into a fist. It wasn’t a big deal, really. It meant cheaper Christmases, for one thing. He wouldn’t have to spend loads of time trying to think of the perfect gift for each person or have to spend lots of his hard-earned money on others. He’d done that for the first two years but quickly learned his lesson after finding not a single card in his postbox over the whole of the holiday period. The space beneath his Christmas tree was empty each year, and by the fourth year living in Bricksburg, he’d given up on celebrating the holiday altogether. What was the point in celebrating something when you had nobody to celebrate it with?   
  
Shortly after he’d given up on celebrating Christmas, he’d given up celebrating other holidays too. He wasn’t a particularly religious person, to begin with, so dropping most holidays came naturally to him. His birthday had been the hardest thing to forget about. He had so many memories of his parents celebrating it with him when he was a kid; it was painful when he eventually decided to give up on that too. Dropping each annual celebration had left fewer and fewer things in his life worth waiting a whole year for, and after he left his birthday off the calendar, he was left with nothing.   
  
It became a horrible routine after that. He’d work hard all day, come home to an empty apartment and simply sit on the couch, staring at the television. Even his favourite shows became dire and bland to him. More often than not, he wouldn’t even bother putting the TV on. He’d simply sit on the couch and stare at his reflection in the blank screen. He didn’t smile when he was at home, not anymore. There was nothing there that actually made him smile. At least if he was at work or out and about, he could plaster a smile onto his face and pretend that everything was alright, but when he was at home when there was nothing to distract him from how empty and meaningless his life was, that smile never showed. He kept thinking about what it would be like if he just … stopped. Pulled the plug. Gave up completely. He knew that nobody would actually care. Nobody at work would notice that he was gone. His neighbours never checked on him anyway, so it would hardly make a difference there. His paychecks would simply stop, since there’d be nobody around to receive them, and life for everyone else would carry on as normal.   
  
He kept going, however, because that’s what the Instructions told him to do.

They never told him how to deal with the Voice, however.   
  
Over time, the longer Emmet spent living alone, the more the Voice would make an appearance in his head. Every time he talked to another coworker, be it casual gossip or handing over supplies or anything, the Voice would remind him that his co-workers didn’t care for him, that they never bothered to check if he was okay, or if he wanted to go do something fun with them. The Voice reminded him that to them, he was a tool, He was nothing more than an object, designed to be useful in construction work and nothing else. He was not something that one would interact with more than the bare minimum, or take out for dinner, or invite to parties or even ask about its wellbeing. Emmet was simply a tool to them, and nothing more.   
  
At first, Emmet had argued with the Voice, telling it that _yes,_ his coworkers _did_ care, because why would Gale have smiled at him as he handed over those pieces? Or why would Harry thank him for letting him borrow his screwdriver? Why would any of his coworkers put up with him if they didn’t care about him?   
  
_That’s just it,_ the Voice would always remind him. _They’re putting up with you. They’re tolerating you. They don’t care about you, they’re just too polite to say anything. I guarantee you that not a single one of them even_ thinks _about you during their off-time._

Eventually, Emmet gave up on arguing with the Voice. He let it tell him whatever it pleased, which usually consisted of a lot of things he already knew. One: his co-workers, neighbours, and those he interacted with on a regular basis did not care for him. Two: no matter how hard he tried, nobody was ever _going_ to care about him. Three: the harder he tried, the more he pushed people away. And four: he was going to be alone for the rest of his life.

The Voice was almost always present, now, so Emmet just let it talk. Most of its words were things he heard day in, day out, but occasionally he’d hear new insults, remarks or comments. He could stomach the majority of them pretty well, but every so often there was one that had him kneeling over the toilet bowl, heaving up everything he’d eaten that day.

The nausea caused by the Voice’s words left Emmet eating less and less, skipping meals more and more frequently. He stopped bringing a packed lunch with him to work, ending up sitting alone in the lunch hall with his nose buried in a book instead. Soon, he wasn’t eating breakfast either, finding that he had little to no energy in the mornings, and certainly nowhere _near_ enough energy to get up and prepare breakfast. At most he’d grab a piece of fruit on his way out, but it was never anything more. He stopped buying coffee from the local overpriced coffee shop, too. Walking into a busy cafe full of people who didn’t know he even existed was too hard, so he gave up even trying.

Emmet started spending less of his free time doing something and more of it just lying in bed, staring at the walls or ceiling. He still got up to make sure his houseplants were watered and kept healthy, but that was about it. The few simple plants he had in his home were so easy to take care of; he knew he really would hit rock bottom if they died. His apartment was always quiet, save for the sounds of the street below, or the neighbours around him. He could hear the Jackson family upstairs throw parties almost every week and could hear the young couple below him enjoy each other’s company, so to speak, most nights. He never dreamed of complaining about the noise. After all, who really cared if Emmet wasn’t completely comfortable?   
  
And so, life went on like that for months. Each day, he’d follow a painful routine of dragging himself out of bed, having a shower, brushing his hair (he had to look fit for work, anyway, otherwise he’d be fired), say “good morning” to his house plants, _maybe_ eat breakfast, if there was anything in the fruit bowl that wasn’t rotten. He’d trudge down the stairs of his apartment building and out to his car. He’d make his way to work, trying his best not to turn his car a solid ninety degrees off the edge of the overpass every time he drove across it. After all, that would cause a huge disaster for other road users, and “risk the lives of others” was _certainly_ not written in his Instructions. He’d suffer through his shift at work, watching with pained eyes as his coworkers gossipped and chatted merrily amongst each other, maybe about the latest news or what their weekend plans were, always with Emmet on the outside of the group. He’d read a book throughout his lunch break, ignoring the way his stomach growled and snarled at him. He’d force himself through the rest of his shift then sluggishly make his way to the parking lot. He’d drive home, secretly wishing he’d get hit by a truck on his way there. He’d practically crawl up the stairs to his apartment, before collapsing into bed.

For months, Emmet forced himself to live like this. He forced himself to live as closely by the Instructions as he could because they were there for a reason. His favourite songs became white noise to him, his favourite foods became bland mush, and his favourite shirts became dull rags. He was losing weight alarmingly fast. Or, well, it _would_ have been alarming, had he truly cared. His house plants stayed relatively healthy, as he made sure to water them regularly. His eyes became dull, his cheeks sunken from malnutrition. His hair was greasy and unkempt, often sticking up all over the place. His hard hat disguised it while he was at work, and his coworkers never talked to him long enough to see the state he was in, so it was fine, right?

Eventually, however, he grew sick of it. He grew sick of pretending that he was needed in the world. He got sick of forcing himself through each day, knowing that the outcome would be just the same every time. He got sick of forcing himself to interact with people who didn’t care about him. He even got sick of caring for his houseplants, and that’s when Emmet knew he’d hit rock bottom. It was getting harder and harder each day to get out of bed, to go to work and perform the same repetitive, strenuous tasks every day. It got hard for him to keep going. The day his first houseplant died was the day that he was finally ready to give up altogether.

He decided to give it one more day, and if after that one more day, things didn’t change, he’d give up.

He figured that he should at least _try_ for this last day. He would get up, pretend that everything was all hunky-dory, follow the Instructions to a T, pretend to be cheerful and energetic at work, maybe even eat lunch, then come home. He might even go for coffee on his way to work in the morning. Live his last day as if it was the best day of his life. Honestly, judging by his track record, it probably was going to be.

So that’s what he did. The morning of what was to be his last day, he woke up at seven a.m on the dot and forced a smile onto his face. He greeted the various objects in his apartment, had a shower, shaved and combed his hair. He had a proper breakfast for once and even watched a little TV. He made his way to work after purchasing an overpriced coffee, singing along to the current most popular song on the radio, He forced his way through his shift with a smile, helping out as many people as he could. He tried to include himself in conversation throughout the day, despite the usual cold shoulders he received. His hopes sunk further and further as he made his way towards his car.   
  
That was when he spotted _Her._

 

 

And his whole life changed after that.


End file.
